"not known or seen or not meant to be known or seen by others"
The United States of America. The self-proclaimed centre of the world. The most subtly military dictated nation on the planet. Home to one of the most racist and hateful populations in the world. Forged from the destruction of a people's pride and culture. And from all negative ideals and hate, there comes a brighter light. The Justice League.
Protectors of the Earth. Guardians of the people. Rebels against the evil and the corrupt. Leading the free people of Earth towards a brighter future with no crime and no violence. The Justice League's Utopia, was what a rather opposed journalist called it. Fantasy land. That's not real, this is real.
Flames licked the clouds and smoke rose towards the heavens as the remains of a fast food joint burned quickly to the ground. The sunny sky that was present earlier that day was consumed by the black cloud and a solemn shadow was cast over the city of Amity Park. People from fifty miles around stopped what they were doing to look into the distance at the large atomic bomb-like smoke cloud in awe. The local emergency response station was flooded with calls from panicked citizens; never before in all their years of dealing with either crazed ghost fanatics and/or crazy ghosts themselves, had they seen this level of destruction.
"Hello, 911, what's your emergency?"
"Hello? I just felt an explosion! It shook my whole apartment, knocked my glass right off the table! I went over to check on my neighbour and she said she felt it too, her plants are all over the floor. I'm at my window right now and I can see smoke rising from the downtown area. I don't know what's going on but you should send someone down there fast. There's no way they can miss it, it's a giant smoke cloud. It's blocking out the sun, I swear! Get somebody there now, there might still be people down there!"
Ambulances, firetrucks, and police cars were all dispatched and rushed down city streets, sirens blaring and lights flashing. By that point, whoever hadn't felt the explosion or seen the cloud knew something was up. Something big. A group of teens watched as a firetruck sped down the street, screeching around the intersection corner. The tall, muscular blonde boy turned to a beautiful, petite brunette girl who shrugged and their group of friends started after the sirens. Their human need to view tragedy refused to let them do anything else.
A handsome man sidestepped a flaming plastic seat, lying in the middle of the desolate street all by its lonesome. A man just behind him held a large video camera on his shoulder that he kept focused on the news anchor in front of him. The cameraman looked around him as the great fire raged on, grasping onto neighbouring buildings and slipping in, disturbing the contents inside.
"Hello Amity Park, this is Lance Thunder reporting live from the scene of a large explosion downtown. The area frequented by most of our city's youth is almost unrecognizable due to the magnitude of the explosion. Behind me now are the remains of restaurant The Nasty Burger, known for it's spicy condiments, said to be lethally explosive when heated to a certain temperature. While there aren't yet any theories on what caused the explosion, the famous spicy condiments cannot be overlooked. Also, local ghost boy Danny Phantom was seen in this area of the city not half an hour ago. Whether he is involved with the crime in unclear at this time. Authorities are arriving at the scene now and are trying to contain the fire that seems to be spreading down the block. Oh- yes! You, sir! Do you have any information now that the public should know about the situation?"
"Ugh, great. Well, at the moment the cause is unclear but upon further investigation we should have it by the end of the week, whether any ghosts or malevolent spirits were involved is also unclear, and we are uncertain whether any casualties were caught in the explosion. Now get behind the yellow tape! Let us do our job. Damn reporters."
"There you have it folks. While the situation at the moment is a little foggy, we'll get the details to you as soon as we have them. As it stands right now, the Nasty Burger has been brought to the ground and downtown Amity Park is in flames. The authorities seem to have the situation under control but to be cautious, citizens should stay inside their homes and avoid this area. Back to you, at the station."
A firefighter aimed a firehose at a nearby building that had attracted the fire. From where she stood, she could see that the epicentre of the explosion had increased into a raging inferno. Focusing at her building, she yelled at three other firefighters to aim at a window that had flames licking out and tasting the bricks. The cool stream sizzled and evaporate into steam as it killed the flames.
"Okay, Avery, I need you to step up, I'm going inside with the team. What? Yes, I know. Yeah, alright, okay. Are you kidding—ugh, just shut up for a second, this isn't your average situation! Do you know what this building used to be used for? What they made here? Yeah, I need to make sure there's no dangerous chemicals inside because if there are, we're going to have a huge evacuation and quarantine problem on our hands. And let me tell you before you go off complaining like a teenager, that's a way better situation than letting innocent people die because you were lazy and didn't want to listen to your superiors and do your job. I'm the only person in our department who is qualified to do this ever since Mike got laid off last month. So I'm going to go and do my job and you're going to do what I tell you to, because that's your job. Am I clear? Good, now take command."
Avery glared at the woman as she walked away, her face set with straight lines. He watched her with narrowed blue eyes as she pulled at her brown hair pulled back tightly into a low ponytail. His eyes only narrowed more as he took in her petite shoulders, covered in heavy fire equipment but still there. He glared ferociously at her waistline, disguised by her utility belt stocked up with gadgets. He rested his hard, pretty blue eyes on her behind, non-existent. By now she'd walked so far that the man, Samuel, who stood beside him, didn't even recognize her as a woman and waved a gloved hand in front of Avery's face.
"Sir, what are your next orders?"
Lisa Wells was a thirty-five years old woman. She was married to a man named Keith Scott. He was an emergency dispatcher. Every time she goes out with him, people think that she's odd. They think she doesn't see the looks they give her. Even though it's all 'yay women!' and 'we're all equal!' no one can even start to fathom why a wife wouldn't obediently give up her name for her husband.
Lisa Wells is a feminist. She doesn't back down from macho men who think they're superior to her because of the thing hanging between their legs and the fact they can biologically put on more muscle than she can. She knows it makes them feel threatened when she embarrasses them and she knows that's why they act like they do. She knows that he thinks she can't feel his beady eyes all over her body as she walks away. She'd worked as a firefighter for twelve years, five in the big leagues: Gotham City, and seven in the quiet suburb of Amity Park. After taking care of a city that was home to some of the world's most violent and messy super-villains, cleaning up after ghost boys and hunters and box fetish ghosts was a vacation for her.
Lisa Wells was a mother. She had one child, a boy named Alexander Wells-Scott. He was six years old and he had brown hair after her and grey eyes after Keith. He was the reason they'd moved away from Gotham. If anything were to happen to him or to Keith, she'd become a shell of a person. A memory.
Lisa Wells knows her job is dangerous. She's had to run into buildings that were about to collapse and some that did when she'd been a footstep away from entering or a footstep after exiting. She knew about the risks when she chose to become a firefighter in the first place.
Keith Scott had seen everything. He'd heard everything is probably the more accurate term. For the two of them ten years ago, fresh out of college and right into the crime that was Gotham City, he'd talked to people with guns to their head, getting blown away in the middle of a word. He'd talked to the Joker. Tried to convince him to put the young man back on the phone during a bank robbery. The kid couldn't have been older than sixteen, with a little squeak in his hasty whispers.
"You should see him. He sure is pretty, just a little itty witty baby boy. He's trying not to cry, it's so adorable! Aww! It's okay sweetie, just let it out because, just between you, me, and everyone here, including the nice man over the phone, you're nearing your final moments. Hey, are you still there? Good! I was just telling our mutual friend here that he's most likely definitely going to die soon. You know what, hold that thought—hey kid! What's yer name? I feel like it'd be wrong to kill something so darn adorable without first learning their name! Ooo. That suits you, dear flower. Hey, so I was just telling—oops, sorry, have to go!"
The vigilante had stopped the robbery and put the madman Joker behind bars, temporarily at least but not without casualties. Among them was eighty year old Alister MacDonald, forty-six year old Alison Grey, ten year old Jaime Locke-Smith, and sixteen year old Mason Rose, found with a cell phone laid over the adolescent's wide, dead brown eyes.
Keith Scott was a true American man, whatever that meant. He loved his wife and he loved his son. He didn't know how exactly he felt about his job, though. He helped people and saved lives all the time but he'd also listened and endured more than his fair share of final goodbyes, even if they weren't planned. And because his wife and because he loved his son, he'd convinced Lisa to move away. They'd grown up in different cities—him in Toronto, Canada and her in Smallville, Kansas—he wasn't sure what growing up in a city that was in constant danger and disarray would do to a child. He'd convinced her to accept the promotion in Amity Park, more paperwork and less risk. He didn't want to lose her.
But in situations like this one, where half the city is on fire and the other half is panicking like crazy, things change.
When a woman is beautiful, stunningly so, she is deemed an angel. One of God's holy creations; unachievable, unreachable, unimaginable. A woman who is described as an angel is far more beautiful than any of the other mortal women she would ever encounter, in body and soul. It was the only word he could describe the being standing beside him now.
She was definitely an angel. A dark angel mind you. Dressed in a the most beautiful gothic dress he'd ever seen, true beauty. A black feathered bodice that wrapped around her torso, up around her left shoulder, and tucked in the front of her neck. A long green skirt trailed down behind her and a split ran down her right leg, showing that she was barefoot. Her short black hair laid unruly on her shoulders- messy and tangled with green vines. Her familiar amethyst eyes stared into his own, tears pooling in their depths.
He watched her in awe. The angel's mouth tilted up at the corners as she smiled at him and he felt something similar to when the moon appears from behind a grey cloud, shinning it's missing light and courage onto the Earth. He smiled back and went to tell her of her beauty, but all the sounded from the scabbed skin around his mouth was a scratchy yawn. Her smile disappeared.
She knelt down beside him and laid a hand down on his head, stroking his hair back and forth. He couldn't take his eyes off of her. It was as if he knew her from somewhere, sometime. Tears fled down her face and he felt pain for her. Her lips were moving and she started moving her hands in front of her. He couldn't hear her. He felt tears run down his own cheeks as he thought of the possibility of sitting in this place of nothingness unable to hear a syllable of this dark angel's voice, just watching as she struggled to make him hear her.
She stood suddenly, forcing a squeak to escape from his throat. A few steps away from him, she turned and reflected her beauty upon him again. She slowly held out a hand to him, approaching him no further, a hopeful smile on her face. He smiled back and went to lift his own hand to grasp hers and leave this place with her when he realized
he couldn't feel his hand.
Smoke inhalation, multiple not to mention massive injuries, and stress weighed down on him as he came to the strange, bizarre realization that he couldn't feel anything past his right shoulder. A large locker of sorts, grey, rusting, and old, fallen from the against the fall he was lying against now, sat triumphantly on his arm. Green could be seen dribbling out from underneath and pooled against his hip. He didn't noticed the tinge of yellow that seeped out within the green, sizzling and eating away at the spirit's life source. He could only smell the smoke—he could only hear the flames.
His breath came out in irregular tones and his mind started to fuzz. Why was he here? He doesn't know, wasn't he studying for the C.A.T.s with Jazz just a few seconds ago? Where was Jazz? If Danny had been taken down so quickly and easily Jazz definitely would've been too! Or, maybe he didn't get taken down as easily as he might've thought. His collarbone was aching along with other various parts of his body, he must've put up some kind of a fight. Why couldn't he remember anything then? What about Tucker and Sam? Did they know where he was? Why was the building on fire? Who attacked him? What-
"You're going into shock. I need you to focus on something—anything, to keep yourself calm."
He couldn't feel his arm. He decided to focus on that.
There was a freckle on his hand, small and unnoticeable if you didn't look hard enough. It sat proudly in his palm, off to the side towards his thumb. He'd discovered it when he was ten years old. Running around the school playground with a friend. He'd fallen after a tall boy knocked him over. His friend had ran towards him and helped him up. After letting go of his friend, he'd looked at the inside of his hand, absentmindedly, the way most kids do. And there it was. A freckle. The most unimportant, not special, stupid thing he'd ever seen and he was entranced by it. For the rest of his life, he'd look down at his right hand and see it. Even when everything changed around him, it was the one variable that stayed the same.
"This isn't helping. Remember what we talked about, Danny. In, out, in, out."
And in, out, in, out the air in his lungs went. His eyes glazed over from the smoke cloud now resting in his lungs and he tried to retch, hoping the expulsion of his stomach contents could remedy the situation in his chest. Bile rose and dribbled down his jaw, dropping and landing on the cracked concrete floor. He stilled slowly, listening for the voice. His delirious mind unable to connect her to a face. His left fist clench weakly in frustration and his right did nothing, he felt nothing.
Wait, he started to get something. A pinch from somewhere beyond him, underneath the cement. A wrinkle of a finger against a rough solid object. He inhaled sharply as he felt something wet, gooey. Ectoplasm.
"No, just calm dow-"
"Ah, wait, wait, wait! What is that? Wait, one second. I-I don't get it! S-sam! Tucker! How'd I get here? Wait. M-my arm! Where is it!? SAM! Jazz! T-tucker! I don't understand," he turned his head quickly to the right, smacking into the cement. He cried out as his already fragile nose broke under the quick contact. Blood seeped out and slipped into his mouth. With his cry, he swallowed the bile-blood cocktail and gagged. He hacked and hacked until he lost the ability to think completely. His side hurt. He laid his head down without hesitation and sobbed. The pathetic picture of hopelessness.
"Danny…"
As the boy sobbed and cried, the yellow that had sneaked into his fallen blood, turning it a sickly vomit colour, continued to eat away at his flesh.
This building was once a proud factory. Herbert's Teeth Cleaner Inc. The first toothpaste factory in Amity Park when they opened in 1946. And they still the only toothpaste factory when they closed in 1972, shut down after the death of Ronald Herbert as was instructed in the reading of his will five months later. They hadn't been able to find the document until then, the old man had kept it in his most secret hiding spot when he'd died and no one, not even his son Jeremy knew where it was. So life went on.
Jeremy Herbert took over as CEO of Herbert Teeth Cleaner Inc. and started making some true profit, surprising all of Amity Park. You see, Jeremy Herbert wasn't a smart boy, he'd never been: always skipping his classes in school, hanging with the druggies as they filled the air with addictive stench, and never took an interest in his father's business. This worried Ronald Herbert. The proud father had never thought badly of his son, who refused to take after him in both looks and personality. While he was a socially awkward short, thin, frail man, his son was a tall, muscular, strong boy with enough charisma to give around. Ronald didn't want to burden his only child with a life of doing something he had absolutely no interest in doing. He loved him too much to do that to him.
So when the the will of Ronald Anthony Herbert was finally found, by his son ironically, it read: to the city of Amity Park, I leave my business Herbert's Teeth Cleaner Inc. The factory is to be closed in six months time and reconstructed into something more beneficial for the city. After the termination of the company, I no other opinions on what will be done with it. To my beloved son Jeremiah Andrea Herbert, I leave with you all of my money, properties, and any and everything else owned under my name. Go do something with it my son. Live the way you please. My only wish is to see you happy and living a life that helps me fulfil it.
The city kept the factory running for five more months until signing a contract with another company: a sleeker more upscale company based in Star City with multiple branches in the US, one being just half an hour outside of Amity Park. And so, with a cheaper option for getting its occupants toothpaste and going along with the terms of Ronald Herbert's will, they signed the contract with Toothcap Co.
Jeremy Herbert left Amity Park almost immediately after the factory was taken from him. Left without telling anyone, not even his girlfriend at the time, the lively Grace Blake, who'd been so close to him. She was the one to find out, walking into his bare house, stripped of valuables and pictures, including the one that had stood on his mantle, him and her right there is his house, a hand on her stomach.
The city turned the building into housing, the area had turned into a social hotspot around the factory—the rural community had created itself around it. Buildings popped up and house appeared until the population of the hot, urban Amity Park was 500 000. It only seemed fitting to create more housing in the rapidly growing city. So, proper electrical and plumbing was installed, walls were put up, and real estate agents were assigned.
But the underground levels of the building remained untouched, undisturbed. When Jeremy Herbert disappeared into thin air, theories were created, of course. Some believed he ran off with his old man's money, off to Gotham to unite with his mistress. Other believed he was murdered, dragged out of his house in the middle of the night and into the basement of Herbert's Teeth Cleaner Inc. by a drug lord he'd managed to irritate.
Even in their time of police officers, government, and logic, no one one was going near those stairs. People moved in and people moved out, like any normal apartment building. Inspections were done and eventually the foundation was renovated, having been done avoiding the basement. No one was sure what they would find if they walked down those back door stairs at the end of the lobby. Maybe the poor soul that happened to stumble into that large, most likely damp room would come across the skeleton of young Jeremy Andrea Herbert, and a dull knife laying between his ribs. No one one knew what exactly they would find. They didn't want to know. They were okay with not knowing.
And even living in a city plagued by spirits, they never assumed that the building could be haunted by the young man's malevolent ghost. Good thing too, because it wasn't, but that just went to show you the intelligence level of Amity Park's average population.
And because no one went into the basement for 42 years, and because the intelligence level of Amity Park's average population was so extremely low, the chemicals that had been used to create Herbert's Teeth Cleaner had been sitting there dangerously untouched for more than four decades. Chemicals such as fluorine: poisonous, explosive, and lethal when exposed to extreme heat. Like a building fire.
Lisa Wells walked cautiously behind the more advanced team of firefighters in front of her as her mind ran around in circles. A few of her co-workers split off into different areas of the building, looking for survivors and putting out the last of the fire. She watched as a man stepped off into a small apartment, watching from another window as he rushed a small teen out into the street, the child dirty with the contents of her ceiling. As the little girl cried and dusted herself off, Lisa thought of Alexander and Keith, knowing she was breaking her promise to the both of them. No more rescue missions. More paperwork, less risk. Glumly, she climbed the stairs with the remainders of her team, watching as at each floor, a small group split off. Finally, after ascending four floors, she traveled back down the stairs with the two remaining men, Jacobs and Prentice.
The two of them watched her accusingly as she walked down the final set of stairs. Unlike her, they'd lived in Amity Park their entire lives, knowing about the 'no go zone' on the that old factory downtown's basement. Unlike her, they were only doing this to keep their jobs. Unlike her, they'd been sheltered their entire lives, not knowing what real danger was, putting your life on the line for others. They didn't know what it was like to work in Gotham, they didn't know. And that's why they didn't understand. With disdain written all over his masked face, Prentice drawled out:
"So, down to the basement now, ma'am?"
"Yeah, you two lead the way. I'll follow but when you get to the door downstairs, don't open it right away, let me. We don't know what's behind it yet."
The two men paused for a moment but then nodded and proceeded to stomp down through the lobby of the ruined apartment building towards the back room stairs. During the refurbishing of the main lobby during its transition into a residential building, due to the area and historical influence of the building, the city had spent an impressive amount of money making it look like a victorian era hotel.
With stylish red carpet on the floors, old-fashioned but not out of style flowered wallpaper ran up and down the walls with the exception of the far wall which was lined with stone blocks. The ceiling had been carefully and artfully crafted, giving the impression of white waves—all converging on the grand chandelier in the centre of the large hall.
A mix between 'so six hundred years ago' and 'oh my gosh that's so fancy' with gold trimmings and silver coating, the piece was a curvy, twisted, ball of light and attention. A gallery of light bulbs sat inside it, within a clearing in the centre of the tangled metal vines. Lovely silver strands of pearls hung down from strings, reaching towards the floor with envy.
As Lisa Wells walked down this awesome room, she thought of what it might have looked like before the fire had raged on within it. What looked like red carpet was almost black with debris and fire scorches and big boot footprints courtesy of her and her team. The flowery wallpaper had peeled off of the walls, showing rotting wood behind and a wall of stone bricks had been turned black, burnt by the heat of the flames. The white ceiling, showing evidence of having been decorated with custom plaster had crumbled and fallen to the ground in pieces, a few lucky spots remained to watch the mess from above. An eye-catching light fixture hung from a dainty wire attached to the ceiling. Gold and silver had been melting off the tangled metal ropes that made the chandelier and dried, making it look like the chandelier was sobbing olympic medals.
Jacobs paused at the top of the staircase, looking down at the straight stairs down. He could see the door from where he stood. An old, rusty door that had multiple padlocks and was littered with graffiti. Evidence of some of the most gruesome dares teenagers could dish out was on that door. Looking over his shoulder, he saw that his superior, Wells, was taking in the destroyed foyer. He glimpsed an awed look on her face was visible through the small window on her mask. Both he and Prentice wore one also, extra-protective gas masks. If there was liquid fluorine in the basement of the building, and if that was the case and the fire had somehow found a way into the underground shelter, this was going to get messy. Poison and acid clouds, explosions, and countless casualties, possibly including himself. He chuckled dryly as he took in the absurdity of it all. Dying in Herbert's basement, the one place kids were usually scared shitless to even go near, even walk halfway across the lobby freaked a lot of people out. He had a lot of respect for the people who actually got up to the door. It was more than he'd ever done.
"Is there a problem, boys?" Wells demanded from behind them, apparently knocked out of her sightseeing. Jacobs turned around and saw that Prentice had too stopped beside him, gaping at the rusting door with wide eyes. Wells' eyes were narrowed and she raised an eyebrow.
It was at moments like these, when his pride is being threatened, that Jacobs gets uncomfortable and irritable. Who was she to judge them for being scared? She didn't grow up here and she never heard the stories about the things that might have happened behind that door. She didn't cross the street as a kid to avoid a deranged and bloody Jeremy Herbert grabbing her off the street, dragging her through the lobby, pulling her down the stairs, squeezing her through that big door, wrapping—
"Of course not, ma'am. We were just waiting for your orders."
"No need, Jacobs, I gave you your orders, oh I don't know, not one minute ago. Make sure the stairs are structurally stable then signal for me to come down once you've done the proper investigations. What are you still standing there staring me for? Go!"
"Unfortunately, everything is as it should be."